Episode 10 - The Rise Of Karen

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd today we are going to talk

about

the rise of karen uh i have a

cousin actually who's named karen and

just thinking about

women nowadays that were named karen

and the connotation now that comes

behind the name karen i

i gotta say this episode is dedicated to

any woman out there named karen

i chose this title the rise of karen

um basically because of the rise of

skywalker

and i thought this would suck less than

that movie

well that's really not setting the bar

all that high though it's not

is it um but

also when i thought of that

i thought back to star wars episode

seven

and you know when she uh gets all that

stuff out of that

crashed um oh the area

yeah no the imperial like oh [ __ ] yeah

no she was in the

yeah yeah yeah and she's scavenging all

that stuff and she goes up to the

counter and the dude

uh says what you've bought me today is

worth one credit

for a moment there i thought she was

gonna ask to speak to the manager

see that would have been great because

you know you can take that two ways i

i always looked at that scene as that

guy

must have been the descendant of the

owner of gamestop

right yeah because it's kind of the same

thing i brought you

500 games that's worth six dollars yeah

i saw i saw a meme uh i don't know maybe

beginning of the year and it said that

there's an estimated 1.3

trillion dollars of um

non-used technology in people's homes

oh and then and then it had gamestop

values at it

12 yeah exactly

exactly so i mean it's kind of funny we

decided today to talk about karen's

because

like i said you know i have a cousin

named karen i got a good friend of mine

his wife's name karen my brother-in-law

by the way did not even know about

what a quote-unquote karen was until

about a month ago

and i had to explain it to him and so i

want to share that story with you

so we went to a vacation spot

and him and i were going to check in for

our

families and there was a couple in front

of us

and this poor little girl behind the

counter was trying to get them checked

in and this woman was just

complaining about the charges for this

and the charges for that

and we prepaid for this and we shouldn't

have to do this and we shouldn't have to

do that

and i kid you not the guy turned around

and said

karen let me handle this and turned

around and finished the transaction

took everything out of me took

absolutely everything out of me not to

laugh when he said

you know karen let me handle this so

they wander off we go up there

to check in and i told the girl behind

the counter i was like

not only was she a karen but her name

was actually

karen i don't know if you heard that or

not and the girl behind the counter said

oh i didn't know you know that uh her

name was really karen but yeah she's

definitely a karen

my brother-in-law looks at me and says

karen

what do you mean what's a karen and i

thought it you know you got to be

kidding me how

how have you missed this for so long how

did you not know what a karen is so

where did where did this karen term

originate wait

what's going on with that well i've only

actually known

one karen in my life and it was a girl i

was

in primary school or elementary school

over here

um when you when you say you knew a

karen you mean a personal

her name was karen sneesby

and i was in love with her from about

age six

about age 15

you know never told her

actually no i did actually tell her on

facebook when she was about 35

but you know by then it was a little bit

too late because then i lived in america

and she was still living in england

but um yeah the name karen actually

comes from the

danish originated name uh catherine

um cat yeah catherine so i don't know

and that's something i always kind of

figure how do you kind of deviate

this name from this name you go like

from katherine

let's go with karen so

i don't know quite how they kind of

pulled that one out but yeah apparently

that's the

earliest earliest recorded name of the

the earliest name of karen that's kind

of ironic to be honest with you because

in in the meme culture we're in today or

or in the uh pop culture

whatever the first kind of stereotypical

karen as we call them was actually that

chick from that john and kate plus eight

you know the the blonde hair the short

bob haircut

has that attitude kind of entitled just

that you know thinks the world

revolves around her all that good stuff

so it's kind of ironic

that the name karen actually

came from catherine and the john and

kate plus eight lady

actually was kind of that quintessential

first care in there well i mean two

years ago if somebody had said

you're being a karen or this karen you

wouldn't have

said anything about it or even

recognized it i mean it's definitely a

last

year year and a half and i mean i

certainly think

you know during the covert 19 um

thing that you know the no mask wearing

karen's or the

please put on a mask karen's have really

certainly come

up and you know the media has

highlighted it and i think it's because

there's been a lack of stuff to report

upon

and so the old slow news day yeah yeah

and so

you know the name karen has become

synonymous with

you know a white middle-class

non-working

female who wants to complain about

something

always wants to complain about something

now obviously those people have always

existed

but it took you know a worldwide

pandemic

to have somebody put a label to it sure

yeah and it always takes something like

that so

uh talking about you know the the

karen's or or the katherines i mean

what would you consider one of the most

famous ones maybe from history not not

not within the past you know five or ten

years something like that i

i mean let let's dig up some kind of a a

historical

karen it can you think of one yeah um

i think history tends to dispose

of characters who don't exactly over

perform

so katherine the [ __ ] and catherine the

stupid kind of

slipped by the wayside kind of history

forgot them

but what about catherine the ginger

well we don't want to go there again

okay

um but catherine the great

was a historical figure i'm not sure why

but you know when somebody mentioned her

name to me

a few years ago i remembered the name i

couldn't remember what she was

synonymous for and so i looked her up on

google

and i don't know this is a myth or not

but

she died because she was too fond of her

horse

ooh she um kissed her

too far yeah i think things went too far

and she died a few days later um and

that's what catherine the great is known

for according to the internet now that

might be an

entire lie but i've got no reason to

doubt the internet

yeah um everything on that that's true

that's the only catherine in history um

i can think of um other than uh

was it catherine oxenburg it was in like

dynasty or something who i had a crush

on

or was it dallas or whatever anyway i

had a crush that's the only other

catherine i know

you're you're you're losing yeah yeah

yeah that's the only

catherine in history worth mentioning

other than catherine the great i think

so the the funny thing to me is

how this uh this karen thing

has has taken such a hold like i said

the beginning of this

i i really feel for the nice

women out there that are named karen do

you know

so i really feel bad for the nice women

out there

named karen right uh wherever

exposed you may be because there's so

many

women who are not named karen that

uh have have you know grabbed this

connotation and

kind of sullied your name so so i kind

of feel for you there but

there's just countless examples out

there of

the karen-like behavior and i don't

think

especially in the united states there

probably isn't a single

individual man or woman or whatever

gender you choose to be

that hasn't witnessed first-hand

karen activity and and and i'm not

talking about

just seeing a meme on the internet or

seeing a video i mean

firsthand live like

actually seeing you know a woman berate

some poor you know minimum wage employee

at a restaurant because of something

or somebody you know did something wrong

or they have an expired coupon

or they don't have the receipt for

return at target

and they always want to speak to the

manager

i've seen it myself i know you've seen

it yourself

there is probably not a soul listening

right now

that hasn't seen something like that

yeah i think

this is one of those bizarre moments in

history where

everybody right back to the 1950s

onwards

probably saw this type of character and

never had a label

to put upon them right and you know it's

really again like i said during this

last six months 12 months

that this label of karen has been put

upon them because we all know

this type of personality as you know i

coached soccer for almost 20 years here

in north texas

and i came across this personality so

many times

like ever had a dollar for every time i

wouldn't be sitting here doing this

podcast

um well listen it part of that whole

karen is that soccer mom

which is now like a cheer mom whatever

mom so

i mean for crying out loud yeah you had

to

see it with all of the the kids you

coached over the years

yeah and that soccer mom which kind of

that used to be the term right the

soccer mom that had the minivan

they were entitled they were the

stay-at-home mom that did all this

and that soccer mom has now turned into

karen yeah and

i think there's a little bit of a

differentiation because

you know the original soccer moms were

i think just defined as a suburban

non-working middle class mom who had

kids in athletics

and main duties were picking up the kids

taking them to you know the

extracurricular activities

taking them back putting something in

the microwave

because you couldn't cook and that was

it but i think the karen version

and there's certainly like i said having

you know coach soccer for 20 years in

north texas

a differentiation between that soccer

mom

and the karen soccer mom because the

karen soccer mom

is that individual who

was always terrible at athletics

um you know probably first prime

responsibility was hall monitor

uh she married

you know kind of out of a league a

little bit she married somebody who

earned a lot of money which afforded her

to be able to stay home

she got a can't be bothered haircut

which is the bob

right which we used to call it in

england that can't be bothered ah

can't be bothered haircut because it

can't be bothered can't be bothered

haircut i don't want to care for anymore

i don't want to have long hair i can't

be bothered about being attractive it

was called a can't be bothered haircut

right and

and not to go off on too much of a

tangent but there is something to be

said about a lot of women that

do decide you know they they have the

long hair that they keep up they

curl it they they do whatever they do

with their hair right you know

they're going to the haircut place all

the time and then they get married

and then something happens when

they've been married for a little bit of

time maybe it's they popped a kid or two

out

or maybe they've just gotten complacent

and lazy and next thing you know

off comes the hair yeah i mean it's

quick fasting in a hurry just

all of a sudden it's like i've reached a

certain either

an age or a certain point in my marriage

and now i just want to chop off my hair

well i i yeah i've never well i think i

think there's a lot to be said in terms

of personality of a woman who chooses to

have a haircut

of nine months post chemotherapy

i mean i just think it's like you know i

mean yeah

we we all want you know the least

you know amount of resistance to

everyday life i mean

hey i shave my hair so you know i wash

my face and i keep going and that's me

done

you know so you know i don't have any

hair on my head shave it off

and stuff but you know um i don't know

if it's i can't remember what

psalm it is it says you know a woman's

hair is a beauty

um right you know but i think that's

true

to a point and you know we know it's

you know a lot of upkeep but we

appreciate that as men even though we

moan about it as men you know it's like

oh she takes so long to get ready but

when she comes out

and she looks fantastic and she looks

beautiful

we we appreciate the end result but it's

those women who

like yeah forget it not gonna bother

with it

you know and it's that where that again

i think that karen bob

came from the um or again in the english

thing can't be bothered thing

but you know they get bothered about

such trivial issues

um and again in the soccer world i mean

even in like you know

under six or under seven you know

kids soccer you know they would get up

and they would

shout at the referees they would cuss

at the referees and it's like this is

under sevens

soccer you're cussing out this 15 year

old

15 year old kid out there yeah the rap

for the rest of the reason for what

reason what what are you gonna get with

this you know your kids on the field

they're cringing

all the other parents on the sideline

are cringing and you do this

week in week out and you have to think

oh what kind of deficit

in their life leads to that behavior

and then does that behavior then get

inherited

uh you know it does you think is the

karen gene

i i think there could be i think it

could be learned behavior as well

i mean you you've had that kind of

mentality activity whatever especially

with kids sports for years

and you know i mean i remember i

you know played sports as a kid and you

know i didn't

have parents that acted like karen's on

the sideline

but i definitely had teammates that had

parents that acted like that

and i kind of think that maybe they

ended up you know having their kids

right

and maybe they're acting that same way

on the sideline as well

and and now that we're in this just

constantly complaining

society and whoever can scream the

loudest

tends to win the argument that's some of

where this comes from now what age do

you think

um certain women become parents because

i can't remember that type of

stereotypical behavior like in high

school or

college i think it kind of hits after

30.

i i was going to say it's got to be 30

plus

yeah i i think there's something

if if there's a 2 in front of their

age that can't quite be a character

right they're still

whether they've been they could have got

married let's say it's 17 or 18 right

but something about being

in their 20s yeah they don't quite have

that

karen it's actually hard in your 20s to

find enough reasons to lose the will to

live

whereas when you get in your 30s i think

that's what yeah

that could be you know the the old joke

about the men in the midlife crisis or

whatever

i mean maybe the the karenism is now the

women's midlife crisis

yeah you know that like you say the

cutting of the hair and then

just kind of giving up on certain things

and just wanting to moan and complain

about

everything could be that version of the

guy buying

the yellow porsche and driving around

you know with a receding hairline and a

beer gut could be the same thing yeah

now do you think

um karen's

fit the environment or search out

avenues where they can be most

effectively

karen as in such and i'm thinking of

like

women actually having kids just so they

can

join the pta oh 100

that happens i i believe that there

are women that have a checklist

that says okay everyone that i

either are friends with or grew up with

have done certain things in their life

by a certain age they've

graduated high school then by a certain

age they've graduated college

then by a certain age they've gotten

married and by a certain age they've had

kids and if i

somehow don't get close to this

checklist

i'm a failure and i'm afraid that

they're gonna talk behind my back

and not invite me to girls night out

yeah and do all of that

so that that totally

totally exists and i challenge you to

say it doesn't because i i've seen it

firsthand yeah that totally exists

so then so then they they check all

these boxes off right check check check

check check and you know

graduated high school graduated college

if that's your thing i got married i had

kids maybe i have a divorce maybe i

don't don't

that part doesn't matter but but now

i've hit all these check marks right

and now because i've hit all these check

marks on my list

you've got to listen to me right because

i've done

all the requirements to be a fulfilled

successful adult

and i know more than you yeah and so

that entitlement kicks in i'm going to

cut my hair off

and by god if you do not honor this

expired coupon that i have i'm going to

speak to your manager yeah and

i watched um i was trying to look up

some videos of uh karen's on youtube

and they were well i think maybe maybe a

quarter of a million

yeah if you were gonna do that then we

would have to probably put this podcast

off for about two and a half years yes

because i wouldn't see you

it would be a 72-hour event but there

was one in toys r us and i think this is

in

arkansas and this woman was at the

counter and she was screaming at the

clerk and

she was picking up uh cuddly toys and

just

throwing them at the cleric and i kind

of really

and i kind of think what could annoy you

in toys r us

so much that you get to the checkout

counter i mean like

it maybe your cooper maybe your coupon

you know if you're 10 off didn't work or

whatever and you get a little bit

annoyed blah blah blah but

i just didn't understand because i mean

she literally went on a rampage she was

picking up

candy she was picking up cuddly toys

throwing that with a clerk and she was

cussing and all their stuff now you know

i get

when you know popeye's chicken had the

spicy chicken burger thing

and they kept running out and you saw

all these videos of people online

were like people were going crazy i can

get that because if i

if i'd have actually gone to popeye's i

mean like

really wanting a spicy chicken burger

and they didn't have any

i can understand wrecking the popeye's

joint

but in toys r us well okay now hang on

you can understand wrecking the popeye's

joint yeah

but would you have you ever had a have

you ever had a popeye's spice and

chicken burger

no then you don't know what you're

talking about okay fair enough okay

continue go on well yeah i just didn't

i just couldn't conceive of how much

anger could come from something like i

said even if you had an expired coupon

which would result in that behavior if

you were a normal

non-florida on meth type person

to actually exhibit that behavior of

just like throwing stuff around

and doing that i just don't get could

could it be

upbringing though and and the reason

that i i think about it this way which

has nothing to do with it karen but

i remember my dad calling me

one day uh i had

gotten married left the house we had our

first kid on the way

my phone rings my my dad was calling me

was this within a week of you leaving

the house

no it was probably like 10 days okay

yeah

and so i answered the phone and my dad

said

uh i i need to call and talk to you

about something because

there's something i've seen that i've

never seen before and i said well what's

that dad and he said well

do you know what time out is and i said

are you what are you talking about like

sports or kids or what he's like no

kids this is a punishment now it's

called time out and i said

well yeah i know what timeout is he said

i didn't know what time

out was and i was at the store

and and of course the store for my dad

and meant

any place you could buy something so no

clue what store it was

uh i was at the store and there was a

kid

misbehaving and he was just smacking

things off the rack and knocking things

down

and his dad was there and and he said

johnny you know if you don't stop

i'm going to put you in timeout and

little johnny just kept doing and little

johnny just kept doing he said johnny

if you don't stop i'm going to put you

in timeout and he just kept doing and he

said i'm going gonna count to three and

if you don't stop doing this you're

gonna be in timeout

one two three okay johnny time out

he said then he grabbed the kid and they

walked off yeah my dad's witnessing this

and he says

i have to see this i have to see what

timeout is yeah

so my dad follows them turns around and

he said

so do you know what time out is i said

well i'm sure he probably

sat him down like you know found a

corner or something it's in a store

most people at their house they have

like a timeout corner or something you

say

well no that's not what happened uh he

was hugging him

saying that you should make better

decisions right

now oh okay so that that was his

definition of time right

now if that would have been a little

girl you could then translate that into

the fact of

this is why some woman went into a toys

r us because she didn't get her way off

her coupon yeah and decided to just

start throwing now do you think like i

mean when you and i were growing up

you know time out was like all right

you're not doing crap in the living room

now go and not do crap in your bedroom

so it wasn't really much of a downscale

you know it's like just go from this

place

to this place now it's like oh time out

go play computer games in your bedroom

for an hour it's like

okay right

well in in you know i i didn't grow up

with

timeout you know my mine was

take everything away from me yeah if i

did something wrong but what did you

have but the point is what what did you

have though at that point in time

well sure you think about the 80s the

90s i mean what did you have

there wasn't much there wasn't much to

take away from me anyway but that little

bit that i had i definitely wanted to

hold on to it right

yeah yeah so i can

circling back to the karen thing i i can

see why then

you know because of that entitlement

yeah

and that's the the word i keep circling

back to is that entitlement that yeah

you need to listen to me i've checked

off all of those

check marks on my little checklist and

i've i've

accomplished all this so i want my

participation trophy

i want everybody to listen to me because

i've earned something i've earned the

right

to do this yeah that that's what's going

on yeah and um

absolutely every definition of a karen

i came across online when i was

searching used the word

narcissism or narcissistic oh sure uh

and obviously that's not an isolated

label that you know has been applied to

people over the last

year or whatever i mean you know that's

an

ongoing thing but like i said i think

this is one of these

unique models in history where it took

so long to put a label

and i don't know what label you could

have put upon these people

without achieving a kind of almost

non-offensive

label like a karen i mean again we feel

sorry for all the karen's out there

nice people so here's some irony though

and i

i read this article i haven't i haven't

fact checked this or researched it but

there

is an article out there hopefully we'll

dig it up and and share it later that

there is

a karen out there i don't know if her

name is really karen or not

that wants people to stop

calling women who exhibit care and

behavior karen's

and they want to call it the k word

rather than karen because they have

deemed it

that offensive yeah so we're getting

we're getting the word karen

up there with like a racial or ethnic

slur

now and it's a name so how would you

feel

how would you feel if your name is karen

and now somebody out there is saying you

can't even say

that word it's the k word and you're

you're just some some lady named karen

what are you supposed to do

well i mean i think it goes back you

know a couple of podcasts ago when we

did the uh

midgets one where the little people of

america

you know started wanted to define the

[ __ ]

name as the m-word the term and

our reaction to that was piss off i

think our same reaction to people

wanting us to call it the k word is

going to be piss off right

uh but i i think karen's

find their home like i said originally

you know when they had kids they'll find

you know the parent teachers association

but you know i think sometimes currents

develop later on in life like at 30

they might be pretty normal but at 35

they turn into a karen

right and so 35 is fine

and so they find the homeowners

associations

if they're in a place where there's a

homeowners association

they sign up for that stuff immediately

right well well you've got the the hoa

in the pta right right that that's the

home for karen yeah there's a

uh you know a a group of crows is called

a murderer

and you know a group of dogs is called a

herd or a pack or whatever

they've always said a group of karen's

is called a homeowner's assistant

sorry interrupt you here do you think

pta meetings

and the home associations meetings they

don't bother taking the first name they

just take the last name because they

automatically assume the first name is

karen or

oh probably so you know if you've got

10 women attending a pta meeting you've

got

[Applause]

11 out of 10 of them have got to be cool

there you go yeah

so you know the hoas i mean that

is um you know there are

i i thought you know because i lived

briefly in an area about eight years ago

which had a homeowners association

and they would come around twice a week

and we'd we would see the car drive at

like four miles per hour

it's like a pedophile outside of a

elementary school

sure and um it would drive by and it was

just

there'd be one person driving and the

other person would be out the passenger

window

taking photos sure and what they were

looking for

down our neighborhood was the height of

the bushes not the higher the grass

because it was difficult when you're

doing a drive by to tell the height of

the grass but they were looking for the

higher the bushes

now mine and yours good friend eric

lived round the corner from us if you

remember

there was one evening we went to visit

him and he had that one bush outside his

house which was cut into a cube

yeah which had like i don't know one

one one bread and it looked terrible but

he didn't have a homeowner's association

down his thing because remember he had

no soil in his yard

right he had one bush outside his front

door which looked

absolutely terrible but my street was a

joining

history and we had people literally

driving down there

two times a day taking photos and we

would get

um letters in the mail not mailed by

actually put in the letter box by hand

your bushes have not been trimmed to so

much

height it's going to be a 15 a month

fine if you don't sort this out and

you know we looked into the metrics of

it and if we paid somebody 15

a week to keep on top of this that'd be

like okay that's sixty dollars a month

yeah we'll just pay the fifteen dollars

fine sure

yeah i i had a a friend who lived in a

homeowners association

and he had decided he was you know kind

of maybe the male version of a karen but

but the silent version of a male version

of a karen

and so he he grew up not around

homeowners associations grew up in south

texas

uh grew up basically on kind of a ranch

and then moved up to uh the dfw

metroplex

and got married and moved into a house

and homeowners association and so he

decided to

read the covenant of the homeowners

association

and this one's a little bit different

than the one of yours where you talk

about them just dropping off

the letters this homeowners association

actually

mailed the letters so what he decided

was he was paying i think he said

two hundred and forty dollars a year to

the homeowners association

so he said he was going to get his money

back

in fines because the way the homeowners

association covenant

read they would send a letter out to

your house

for you to correct it and then you could

request another letter

saying that you corrected the action so

he would purposefully

do little things like leave his trash

cans out for an extra

day right or let something grow up so he

would get the letters he said

i'm gonna get him 30 whatever cents a

a time a week and he got very close i

think within that year he got them to

spend about 190 dollars in postage

sending him letters just trying to get

away from that

my other favorite story with homeowners

associations i lived in one in fact i'm

in one right now

but the the one prior i had a tree that

died in my yard

so i get a letter from the homeowners

association says

you must remove the dead tree from your

yard

so all right went out there knocked it

over

thought everything was good but what do

you mean you knocked it over

oh it was punched it or headbutted it

well it wasn't

any bigger around than like a coke can i

say it was a little twig of a tree right

this isn't a big

tree right so so i just pushed it over

and and

got it hauled off right yep yeah exactly

you just barely had to touch it it fell

over so then i get another letter

from the hoa saying well i've got to

replace that tree

and i thought well you sent me a letter

saying i gotta remove the dead tree now

the dead tree is gone now i gotta put

another tree up was it specific about

what you had to replace it with

oh it was but not not yet you're getting

a little ahead of yourself

so in the covenant it it talked about

the kind of tree that you had to put in

there so what i decided to do

was well in the letter it said i had to

replace

the tree so i found a fake ficus tree

and i planted that in my front yard

knowing there's no way for it to die

because it's a fake tree

i eventually got a letter on that saying

that

i had to get rid of that tree because i

didn't have the proper

species of tree in my front yard

and so i left that tree there for a

little bit and then we moved out shortly

after that

now um if you had to guess how many

homeowners associations do you think

there

are in the united states oh wow yeah i

mean that that is

that is impossible to even fathom i

guess

now i i i don't know 351

000 wow

well let's let's think about that for a

second 351

000 hoas in the united states

that is crazy and it actually covers

53 of all

homeowners in the united states so over

half

of the homeowners in the united states

are covered by

homeowner association so it by that

by that thinking right you have your

federal government you have your state

government you have your local

government

and then you have and then you have the

karen government

so you have four governments essentially

that you're having to submit to if

you're

but you know and if you're an american

citizen that's a homeowner you got a one

in two chance basically

belonging to one of these so so now you

have all these other crazy laws that

you're gonna have to submit to in an hoa

yeah and and the sad part is a lot of

times when you

go to look to buy a house they're

mandatory hoas yeah this isn't something

you can opt out of

if you want to live in this neighborhood

not only do you have to belong to it

you have to pay dues to it and if you

don't pay your dues

guess what they can put a lien on your

house yeah

crazy absolutely but you know people

complain about living in the hood but

there are no hoas or karen's in the hood

because if she turns up she's going to

get shanked

absolutely yeah so you're probably going

to have that that sniper come by that

can find the midgets out there and go

ahead and knock her off

now um again online because this is such

a

new phenomena the whole current thing

and

i'm very interested over the next few

years how it's going to evolve

how they actually because you can

guarantee there's nobody

in the next i don't know decade gonna be

naming their kids karen

um that that would be an interesting

article to research been because

you know you and i never fact check

anything i wonder

over the past several years i mean

parents naming their daughter karen that

that has got to have

traipsed off to almost nothing by now

well i mean um i read an article

actually in the new york times

um and in 1965 it was the

third most popular name okay so

kids born in 1965 so people around the

age of 55

now right right okay karen

was the third most popular name in 2018

i remember this was before the karen

tidal wave

right it fell to 635th

mm-hmm and the article in the new york

times was actually entitled

how did karen's fall so far and remember

this was in 2018

right so this was before the uh karen

crescendo

of uh well yeah i i i

think and don't get me to lion but that

that's probably getting close to the

beginning

of starting to call these soccer moms

karen's

but it wasn't popular it might have been

a sub

thread on reddit something like that but

it wasn't

in everyday speak yeah you know your

non-internet focused people probably

were not

using it they weren't saying okay karen

when somebody

complained to the manager they they

weren't worried about

four women coming into chili's with bob

haircuts

knowing that poor waitress is just not

gonna get a tip and they're

all four going to complain about their

chicken salads that they got and

how they put the wrong dressing or too

much dressing or not enough dressing

or or they didn't fill their iced tea

cup up fast enough

yeah now i've actually got a relative uh

named karen

karen abbott who lives in england and i

think she's about 48

and every time i post a meme on my

facebook

i have to send her a message to

apologize for it

um but like i said outside of her

other than the karen sneeze me girl i

knew you know in elementary school

who had an eternal crush on and maybe

still to this day

um i've not really known any karen so

you know the karen name

goes out of the equation i'm not

necessarily sure it's going to be missed

now in england we had a similar thing

in the mid 90s with the name sharon and

tracy

sharon and sharon and tracy became

synonymous with

very lower-class women

of questionable morals and so

although it was a very popular name

right from

the 1970s up to the mid 90s

the name dropped off and almost nobody

from that point

caught their kids sharon or tracy now do

you think the same thing although again

i've said i don't know that many karen's

do you think karen will be like a

almost no no like nobody will ever name

their kid karen from this point forward

oh i

i absolutely think so in the united

states kind of along those same

lines there were some names out there

one that comes to mind is crystal

you know everybody stopped calling their

kids crystal

zombie you know you know those were

popular names

and those just kind of escaped and you

know

if you look back in the history of

germany

back in the 40s i mean adolf was a

popular name nobody names their kid

adolf anymore kind of kind of that

similar stuff

i i do not picture anybody wanting to

name their kid karen yeah now do you

think

that like you know you were naming them

you know you said crystal

do you think if you had a daughter and

you named a bambi

you would be shocked if she didn't

become a professor of mathematics

oh yeah absolutely i mean i mean either

either that or a neurosurgeon or

something like that

i think she's going to be dancing

somewhere yes absolutely

and not at the new york school ballet

yeah

if you catch my drift and she's going to

bring home small bills

rather than like direct deposit yes yeah

and they should have some white

substances probably all over those small

bills

yeah um i i wanted to actually bring up

a few examples of real life karen's from

real life sufferers relatives and

spouses of karen's you know i found on

the internet like i said it's not an

exact science because it

sure seems so new but you know

there are a lot of uh i guess support

groups which have come up on reddit

you know the social media platform

support groups for

spouses for people for people related to

parents yeah not not just

marriages support group for people who

are married or related or know

karen's or work with karen's and so it's

um like i said it just amazes me it took

this

long to actually come up with a name

to actually define this personality

which probably we've known has existed

for decades and decades

but now we've identified it you know we

can

sell the cure for sure but um you know i

read some of the stories

and uh one one of the first ones i read

and i actually read this one

twice on three links and this

lady said my sister is a karen in

recovery

uh we had to have a karen intervention

where there were a few months ago

a a care invention a karen intervention

i know but let's call it a care

invention

maybe chaos that's part of the queen's

right ki aki

there we go all right ko that's official

now if anybody wants to use that

training

send us eight dollars uh every time you

use it anyway um

so anyway she had a ki uh

with her a few months ago pointed out

that one in every

three restaurant visits resulted in food

being

sent back and or asking to speak to a

manager

so i i don't doubt that

i i am the antithesis of that

and my wife who by the way is not a

karen by any means but

she does get a little careness at

restaurants because a restaurant can

bring me the wrong food

yeah they can bring food with with the

wrong stuff on it

i will still eat it i won't send it back

right i mean it

you know servers are just out there

making a living

the kitchen they're trying to make a

living if i look down at it and i say

yeah i'll eat that

i'll i'll eat it my mother-in-law on the

other hand

if you bring her out a salad at the

beginning of the meal

and there's too much salad dressing

on the salad rather than scrape a little

bit of it off she'll send it back

so i i totally get that one

totally get that yeah and there's um

one i read which you know instead of me

finding it

funny i actually uh it kind of caught me

in one of those

midterm things of i actually felt quite

sympathetic

so so so it went from kind of a funny

two yeah

i actually felt quite sympathetic about

this one and

it said uh my brother was married to a

karen

she lived to berate people and rarely

went anywhere without a flask of vodka

to fuel a fire which

well i don't know sometimes you need

that but it said uh in her first year of

marriage

she decided her husband had to earn sex

oh after a few years he divorced her

and she still can't understand in quotes

why he left her perfect ass ah

you know it i think i think even

gnosticism

well that is narcissism of course but it

in the same vein you talk about the

couldn't go anywhere with the flask of

vodka let's also

not forget about that stereotypical fact

of the karen

that always talks about wine you know

that they're always

you know they've got to have their they

always post the memes yeah

yeah and you know wine makes me happy or

mommy needs wine

something like that yeah and and they

usually take a picture of themselves

with a glass of wine and what's hanging

behind them in their house

live laugh and love that

you know i'm surprised that tattoo shops

do not give those tattoos for free to

karen's

because you know they're going to

complain about the size of the font

or the way that it's tattooed to them

but that's their mantra

don't you don't you just love that

hashtag blessed

that that's more of a southern thing

yeah but but it's kind of the same thing

yeah yeah

but every other post is complaining

about something oh

absolutely hashtag bless yes i'm blessed

i'm blessed

mama needs wine live laugh love yeah

let's do

all that yeah any any other interesting

karen stories

yeah i mean again there was one which

came up a whole

bunch of times and um i don't know this

lady is i think she was from like north

carolina

and uh she said my aunt is a karen

the number of times i have heard the

squeaky wheel gets the grease

makes me cringe oh yeah it and it's

it's always that presupposition that

they have to get out there and they have

to tell everybody this is the way things

needs to be done

that this is my opinion my opinion is

fact

and you better listen to me because once

again i've checked all those check boxes

off on my list

i i am karen hear me roar yeah

now i'm actually uh you know over the

last

six months despite the negative impact

of covered 19

i'm actually really glad like i said

we've actually come up

with a word and a definition

for this type of character because we

went decades maybe like

almost a century have a non-identifiable

term

for women who act in this certain manner

and now we have a word for it so yeah

i'm sorry for the people named karen who

are wonderful people

um all three of you out there yeah i

mean nobody's gonna name their kid karen

from now on so i mean that's

that's absolutely fine uh but no i'm

actually happy

we now have a word for that type of

behavior

and i think almost if you kind of uh

measure it out with covid19 i think it's

kind of a

it's a kind of equal absolutely that

that word is

that word is going to carry forward

we're going to

be able to use that for quite a while

yeah i can't imagine a replacement for

it

i'm not saying there won't be who knows

what's going to happen in a year or two

there might be a different word for it

but i'll tell you what

sorry to interrupt if i get another dog

and it's a female

i am definitely calling it karen because

i want to shout

when it's at the dog park and it's

running away from me i want to shout

karen

karen come here karen absolutely

i totally agree with that and with that

thanks for tuning in to this episode of

the wolf and the shepherd we'll catch

you next time